The Shameless Man
**BOOM! BOOM!!**
An invisible force, heavy as a thousand catties, slammed down on Gu Jian and nearly flattened him against the ground. The concrete caved in beneath his body, leaving a human-shaped crater ringed with a spray of blood.
Gu Jian was, after all, an Intermediate-Level Mage approaching his peak — yet before Ai Jiangtu, he hadn't managed a single counterattack. If the man hadn't summoned his Armor Enchanted Gear at the last possible moment to shield himself, that gravity hammer would have ground him into a pulp.
The strike had been delivered without a shred of mercy. Ai Jiangtu hadn't even bothered to check whether Gu Jian's Armor Enchanted Gear was still active.
Had it been on cooldown, Gu Jian would simply have died.
Concrete fragments scattered in every direction. A cloud of dust billowed up. Silence fell over the surrounding area — no one dared step forward to stop it, and no one dared go near Gu Jian to check on him.
The power Ai Jiangtu had just displayed — his whole body wreathed in deep black — was on a completely different level from the students gathered around him. Most of them had never even witnessed the kind of force he commanded.
"Sp... Space Element!"
After a long silence, Mo Fan finally breathed those words.
If the Flame Enchantress — Jiang Feng — hadn't used that same power before, Mo Fan would have been just as bewildered as everyone else.
Dimensional Magic — Space Element!
The Summoning Element also fell under Dimensional Magic, but the Space Element was said to awaken only in High-Level Mages, and even then the awakening rate was vanishingly rare.
Elemental Magic was the most common form of power, introduced in high school and refined through university.
At the university level, students were also taught the fundamentals of White Magic, Black Magic, and Dimensional Magic.
For Basic- and Intermediate-Level Mages, exposure to White Magic, Black Magic, and Dimensional Magic was limited — and within Dimensional Magic, the Space Element was the rarest by far.
The Space Element abilities Ai Jiangtu had just demonstrated were ferociously powerful. Even the three referee instructors had been left speechless.
Mo Fan had long been curious about the other pre-selected contestant — the one, like himself, who had been quietly confirmed for a spot. He'd wondered what made that person so special. Now he knew, and the answer was jaw-dropping.
Gu Jian lay buried in the concrete, motionless — no telling if he was alive or dead. At a rough guess, he had already lost half his life.
His shock finally fading, Mo Fan snapped back to reality — and only then noticed that the figure who, one moment ago, had looked like some dark demon had now become a gentle, doting big brother, running a tender hand over Ai Tutu's head, his affection entirely undisguised.
"He's... not going to die, is he?" Ai Tutu asked in a small voice.
"He'll die without treatment," Ai Jiangtu answered.
"..."
Mo Fan had nothing but admiration for this violent, overprotective lunatic. He hurriedly caught the eye of the referee instructor with a pointed look.
The instructor still seemed to be in shock — it took a good while before he managed to pry Gu Jian out of the broken concrete and rush him off to the infirmary.
If a student died under their supervision, the instructors would be held severely accountable.
"Too many people here. Let's go." Ai Jiangtu swept a glance around them and spoke.
Before he'd even finished the sentence, however, the students in the area vanished like ghosts — gone in an instant, terrified that this madman might want some peace and quiet and decide to clear the area by other means.
Ah Li Jie and Liu Xin, the two who had lingered, took one look at what remained of Gu Jian and silently congratulated themselves. They had grumbled about Ai Tutu, sure — but they had never insulted her.
The group left together. Ai Jiangtu acted as if nothing had happened and invited everyone out for drinks.
He clearly had a serious taste for alcohol — barely a few words into the conversation, he had already drained several large bowls. Once the drink was in him, the imposing authority he carried seemed to dissolve, leaving behind someone who seemed no more unusual than any ordinary young man.
Perhaps drinking was the only time he truly let himself shed the armor of a soldier's severe bearing.
"Oh, so you're Mo Fan." Ai Jiangtu looked at him with open surprise.
Across all of China, only two contestants had been pre-selected for the national academy team: himself, Ai Jiangtu, from a military academy — and one other who was effectively confirmed but not yet officially named. He had been curious about that person too, and hadn't expected them to turn out to be his little sister's dormmate.
"Yeah. If I'd known you were around, I wouldn't have needed to step in for Ai Tutu at all," Mo Fan said with a laugh.
*This Ai Jiangtu is far more ruthless than I ever am.*
"It's different. You acted as her friend. I acted as her brother." Ai Jiangtu shook his head, his expression completely earnest.
"Fair enough," Mo Fan said with a wry smile. By that logic, with Ai Tutu's many friends and relatives each taking their turn, by the time Gu Jian had been beaten by all of them he would have died several times over.
"Either way, I'm glad we could meet early. I'm demanding of my team members — not just in terms of strength, but in terms of guts and conviction. You qualify," Ai Jiangtu said.
"Team members?" Ding Yumian, always perceptive when it came to details, caught the slip immediately.
Ai Jiangtu froze, then waved it off quickly and steered the conversation elsewhere.
It seemed the drink had loosened his tongue a little too much.
Mo Fan wasn't slow either — he instantly grasped what the slip had revealed.
*So this guy is the captain of the National Academy Team.* Not just a pre-selected contestant — his position had already been locked in as well.
It made sense. Someone forged through years of real combat at a military academy would have exceptional battlefield experience, command instincts, and discipline far beyond what any other student could match. Add to that a level of power that already dwarfed everyone his age, and the mysterious and exceedingly rare Space Element...
If this was who Mo Fan would be fighting alongside, he found himself quietly looking forward to the grand tournament ahead — how many extraordinary talents would gather, and what kind of formidable enemies they would face.
Once the introductions were done, Ai Tutu dragged her brother off to explore Shanghai. He had come all this way in the middle of a packed schedule just to see her — the others naturally had no reason to intrude.
Back at the apartment, Mo Fan sprawled on the sofa and muttered to himself: "Didn't expect that..."
"Didn't expect what?" Mu Nujiao slipped out from behind the small bar like a pale ghost, holding a glass of deep red liquid that shimmered a lovely crimson.
"Oh — you know Ai Tutu's brother?" Mo Fan asked.
"You mean Ai Jiangtu?" A flicker of awe passed through Mu Nujiao's eyes.
"Yeah. He's something else."
"He really is. I've been hearing stories about him since I was little." She looked worn and tired. She settled onto the sofa beside Mo Fan and set her glass on the side table. "He's another kind of madman — took the military academy route, hunted Demon-Beasts, and his power puts everyone who trained the conventional way utterly to shame."
"What's wrong? Since when do you drink?" Mo Fan noticed she seemed off and asked.
Mu Nujiao gave a hollow smile and sighed. "What do you think... I probably can't even win the Nomination Competition anymore. Without that slot, I doubt my family will bother pulling strings for me on anything else."
As she reached for her glass, Mo Fan quietly slid it away, tilted his head back, and drained it himself without a word.
Mu Nujiao's eyes went wide, her expression somewhere between embarrassment and indignation.
*That shameless man — that was MY glass!!*